Adding a log section to a Microsoft Dynamics CRM form

Question

I am managing a projects (subtype of Activity) collection and I would like to implement a simple "Status change" log.

The idea would be that of replicating the simple but effective order management log seen in Prestashop (see image), Order management screen: User selects the new project status, clicks [UPDATE STATUS], and a new row gets appended to the log with new status, date of the change, person having triggered the change.

The basic implementation could be a text area used as a log, the best implementation possible would be that of having a grid.

Could somebody point me in the right direction to do this?

I am using version 2011 but moving to 2015 in a few days.

Answer 1

If you don't want to use Auditing as suggested by Henrik in his answer, the alternative is to create a custom entity that will act as a log entity for your status change.

In order to implement the track of the changes, you need to implement a Plugin that will be triggered on the update message and will create the records inside the new custom entity.

Answer 2

I suggest using auditing:

The following list identifies the data and operations that can be audited: Create, update, and delete operations on records.

You could have an OptionSet representing the status of a project. If you enable auditing on this field (and enable auditing in general for CRM) you will be able to see an audit history of changes to the field. To do so users will have to navigate to the Audit History of the record.

The audit history will look similar to the following (in 2011):